AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #1

🗓️ Week of: January 1-7, 2023

🥳 Happy new year and welcome to the inaugural AWeb3VC Funding Round Up, a weekly newsletter recapping the latest venture funding rounds across Web3 🙌

The Highlights

🚀 We kick-up 2023 with a decent start. This week saw a total of 7 announced deals capturing $20M+ in aggregate funding. Not bad, considering folks are just returning from the holidays. However, it's lower than the levels we saw this time last year in 2022. GamFi and Infrastructure, particularly wallets, led the pack this week. Most of the reported funding rounds were concentrated at the earlier stages, a trend that is likely to continue in 2023 as crypto/web3-focused venture funds deploy capital cautiously.

🏆 The largest funding round went to Com2Verse, a metaverse platform from South Korean game publisher Com2uS. The company received KRW 12B (~$9.5M) in strategic funding from Hana Ventures, Kyobo Book Center, and Kyowon Group - the top financial group, education company, and bookstore chain in South Korea, respectively. The investment comes as all three companies look to further develop their virtual presence in Com2Verse's metaverse.

👀 Keep a close eye on Galaxy Digital in 2023. This week, Galaxy led a Series A+ (i.e., extension) funding round in Candy Digital following reports that the company's major investor, Fanatics, sold its 60% stake in the company to a group of investors also led by Galaxy. In December, Galaxy acquired Argo Blockchain's flagship mining facility and they also won an auction to buy the crypto self-custody platform GK8 as part of the bankruptcy proceedings of Celsius... Looks like Mike Novogratz and team are on a buying spree as they slowly build the next crypto empire.

Funding Rounds

Ondefy - Seed ($1M) | Developer of DeFi marketplace aggregator and fiat to crypto on-ramp solution: https://www.ondefy.com/ 

Odsy - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Network of decentralized wallets (dWallets) that provides a secure, programmable, access layer to Web3: https://odsy.xyz/

Com2Verse – Strategic ($9.5M) | Metaverse platform and subsidiary of game publisher Com2uS: https://www.com2verse.com/

Calvaria - Presale ($2.5M) | Developer of play-to-earn battle card games including title Duels of Eternity: https://calvaria.io/

Assure Wallet - Seed ($1.4M) | Digital asset service aggregator and wallet for Web3 applications: https://www.assure.pro/#/

Msafe - Seed ($5M) | Multi-signature wallet solution for the Aptos/Move ecosystem: https://m-safe.io

Candy Digital - Series A+ (Not Disclosed) | Developer of digital collectibles and trading platform of officially licensed NFTs of the MLB, Netflix, WWE and other top tier brands: https://candy.com

Cool Resources

About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.